Sermon on Luke 17:20-37
Kramer Chapel
Concordia Theological Seminary
Friday after the Third-Last Sunday of the Church Year
November 15, 2013
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our coming Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text is the reading just read. Day of wrath, day of mourning, when to ashes earth is burning like David and Sibyl predicted. Oh, the future filled with trembling as the judge descends from heaven in order to judge and discuss in great detail. The trumpet sounds and resounds through the sepulchers and up the dead come together before the judge. Now, it’s not the end of the world, just the end of the quarter.
But people have thought a great deal about the end of the world. It turned out that, as the millennium approached, many people thought that the Lord Jesus would return that coming December 31st, and so they began all of their preparations: they sold their property, and they gave it to the poor, they went on pilgrimages, they even one day gathered with the Pope in order to welcome in the new year and the new kingdom as Christ returned. Some, deathly afraid, like the words of the Dies Irae just quoted, were said to have died of heart attacks, in fear, while waiting for that moment. But time passed, the bells of St. Peter’s rang, and Pope Sylvester II made the sign of the cross and greeted the year 1000 into the world. The trumpet had not sounded and the dead were not raised. And there were a lot of people really relieved. There’s something a little bit wrong with that picture, but let’s save that for later.
A few hundred years later, a Baptist farmer by the name of William Miller had become convinced he had cracked the code to the date of the return of Christ. It would be no later, he said, than March 21st of 1844. And the popular message went throughout the United States, and people began to sell their property, give their goods to the poor, and gather with William Miller in pilgrimages around the country, and eventually went to a hilltop, it is said, in white robes, awaiting the Lord. And the trumpet did not sound, and the dead were not raised. And William Miller went, “Oops, a slight mathematical error. It will be October 22nd of this year, 1844, that the Lord returns.” And the trumpet did not sound then. And the dead were not raised then. And William Miller said, “I guess I should repent of setting dates.” Ellen G. White, however, responded, “Oh, no! You got the date right, just the event wrong.” And so began Seventh-day Adventism. And later, from its stock, Charles T. Russell, an Adventist, decided that the Lord would return in 1874. And when the trumpet did not sound, he decided that the Lord had appeared invisibly, and so it would be 1914 that the absolute end would happen. 1914 came and went. Charles T. Russell came and went. Future dates — 1918, 1975 — all came and went. When Hal Lindsey decided that because Israel had been around for 40 years, the end of the world was coming in 1988, so did a little fellow by the name of Edgar Whisenant, who published a book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Would Be in ’88, and then later Harold Camping, and the Mayans. And, believe it or not, there will be more, probably, until the day that the Lord does return, and the trumpet sounds, and the dead are really raised. They will not be the last.
You see, no one really knows the day of Christ’s return. As a matter of fact, the Pharisees, while they were sitting with the advent of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, asked, “When is it going to happen?” And so Jesus had to tell them, “You missed it. It’s already here.”
You see, the Bible isn’t an algebra problem, as many of our dear friends in the evangelical community would like to make it out to be. You don’t plug in a despot, crank the wheel, come up with a date, and be able to generate the day that the Lord will return. Jesus said, not even the Son of Man, while He was in His state of humiliation, knew the date — only the Father. But in a perverse way, end-times speculation decides that it can know what the Son of God Himself did not know. It goes something like this, although I don’t think they think of it this way: “I, the first person in 2,000 years, have figured out when the Lord and Savior is going to return — and doesn’t that make me a special prophet? More special than the Son of God and all of the wise prophets and apostles and teachers of the church for 2,000 years since then?”
For those who believe such messages, it gives us a hope in the face of things that in our life just don’t seem to go terribly well. Maybe we don’t feel all that significant because our name isn’t ever in the papers. Maybe we think that all the work we’re doing is going to be completely in vain. If so, I recommend reading Ecclesiastes. If, in all of this, we suffer, either from a long-term debilitating illness or through things that happen in our life — maybe things do not go well, a disaster hits us — we can know, if we believe this, when exactly Jesus is going to come, and we might imagine that we can escape from the sufferings of this world, maybe even we’ll be in a special class that will be zapped out of this world while the rest of the people really suffer. There’s a certain sense of sweet vindication in it for those people we think are persecuting, who are actually persecuting us. We know that they’re going to get theirs when that last day comes, and that we who are righteous will really shine like the stars and will get all of the credit that we have for living our lives so wonderfully during this life.
The problem, if you haven’t learned it from the classes now ending, is that we don’t deserve a bit of it. The big problem with actually wanting the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to return, and to do away with sin, death, and the power of the devil — all those other guys — is that we’re one of those guys as well. We also are sinners, and that sin we cannot free ourselves from. And God, when He promises the end of the world, if you look very carefully, doesn’t promise an escape hatch for Christians. As a matter of fact, He says, “As I have suffered, so you will suffer.” And so escape from all of the things, the troubles and the trials of this world, is not on God’s schedule for us. Instead, He will use those to polish our faith, to strengthen our trust and our grasp in Him, so that when the end of our day — even if it isn’t the end of days — comes, we will be in His hands forever and ever, and we’ll get to see the real thing transpire, because we will be with Him where He is.
The problem with becoming obsessed with the future, in addition, is that we miss the present, and we miss what God is doing here and now. You see, the advent of Christ is not about us. That may come as a kind of a shock to us. The advent of Christ is about what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do for us.
It is yesterday, when He came and lived a perfect life for us, when He suffered and died, rose again, and ascended into heaven to prepare a place for us. It is then that our sins — even our conceit, and our desire for revenge, and desire for escape — were all paid for upon the cross, when, because He had pronounced that sentence upon Jesus, He pronounced the sentence of “not guilty” on us, so that none of these sins will go with us into the next life.
Because He died and rose again from the dead, He has promised that He will be with us always, even to the end of the age itself. In other words, even though Jesus is coming back, He never really left. He has been with His Christians all these years, and He has been with you from the day you were a twinkle in your mom and dad’s eye, to the day when you were admitted to the seminary, to the day when the Lord calls you to serve in His church, to proclaim the gospel or to minister mercy to those in need. He will be with you until the day is come that there is no more for you to do in this life, and He gladly takes you to be by His side at the end of your time, or at the end of time itself. It makes really no practical difference to you, does it?
But there is also the coming of forever, the coming that makes the bride scream, “Come, Lord Jesus, come!” — the day when He will come to earth, and the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised, and those in faith in Christ will go to be with Him forever, for He will dwell with them, and there will be no more sorrow, or sighing, or crying, or pain, for all these things will have passed away. And so I would recommend that we live this life awaiting the second coming, but live it the way that Martin Luther supposedly said, but didn’t. It is said that he said, when he was asked what he would do today if the world was going to come to an end, “I go plant an apple tree.” And so, even though Luther didn’t say it, let’s go plant some apple trees. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be and abide with us both now and forevermore. Amen.
Audio of the sermon as it was originally preached: http://ctsfwmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/Kramer_Chapel/Kramer2013/DailyChapel/Audio/ser-DCKRAM-131115-rsmith.mp3
Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog
The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack
Rev. Robert E. Smith
Pastor Emeritus
Fort Wayne, Indiana
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